Line in the Sand
by Kailene
Summary: Something big was coming for them, something bad. And Jack was going to be ready. *Missing scene between Jack and Matty; S1e20 Hole Puncher and S1e21, Season Finale, Cigar Cutter


Author's Note:  This is actually my second MacGyver I've written, the first being a tag to Chisel that is complete and just waiting for me finish the edits on it. But this idea wouldn't let me go, and just begged to be written.

A great big Thanks goes out to Ridley C James for reading this over for, and getting her thoughts back to me so quickly. Your help and advice has been greatly appreciated.

And, as always, to Riathema. I couldn't do any of this without you.

~~MacGyver~~

"Dalton? What are you still doing here? I told you guys to leave hours ago."

"Mac's jogging," Jack answers his boss simply. He doesn't move from where he's been standing in the center of the dimly lit room, legs planted firmly on the carpeted floor and arms folded across his chest, but he senses her come further into the War Room and stand in front of him.

"And you thought what?" she asks, and he can feel her eyes assessing him as he continues to study the mug shots and background information he brought back up and displayed on the vid screen in front of him. "That if you stood and glared at the big screen hard enough you'd develop laser vision and be able to _Cyclops_ away our two biggest problems?"

Despite himself, that gets Jack's attention, and he looks down at Matty with a sly smile. "That—"

"No," she says, crossing her arms and staring up at him, and each word that follows is slow and stressed. "No lasers. And you will not get that partner of yours to _MacGyver_ you up one either. Are we clear? You are more than destructive enough already with the weapons you have at hand."

"You never let me have any fun, Matty," Jack grouses.

"Yeah, yeah... _Matilda the Hun_ , remember?" Matty fixes him with a pointed look, and Jack can only smile and shrug sheepishly at being caught out as the one to coin that phrase. "And speaking of your partner," she continues, tone curious as she looks around the room, "I'm surprised that you let him out of your sight. I know how hard the past couple of days were on you as well."

Jack can only scoff at that. Because _hard_ is the understatement of the century when it comes to how he felt about all of this from the get go.

He bites back the rant that bubbles in his chest, just clawing to escape. "I didn't." He uncrosses his arms and swipes his thumb across the phone he has gripped in his hand. It comes to life and he studies the data still running—literally—on the screen for a moment before turning it around and showing it to his boss.

"What is that?" Matty looks at the phone before her gaze snaps up at him, eyes wide and expression caught somewhere between shocked and pissed. "Is that? Did you…? Did you _chip_ your partner?"

"Now _that_ would be an excellent idea," Jack drawls slowly. "Sure would do wonders for my blood pressure. Always know where the heck he's wondered off to. Maybe I can get Riley to find that Brett guy's second mistress—"

"Jack!" Matty snaps.

"Alright, alright. No, jeez, I didn't chip Mac, alright," Jack concedes, though he is only half joking at the suggestion of actually doing it. "I have a buddy that was a Seal. Still has all sorts of connections to all sorts of things that you're better off not knowing how he got his hands on it in the first place. He sent it to me…said he thought of me and my, and I quote, " _over-protective, mama-bear attitude_ " toward my young partner when he saw it."

Matty laughs. "I think I like this guy."

Jack gives a small laugh of his own at the thought of Steve McGarrett and Matty Weber ever meeting and, God forbid, ever having to work together. Steve wouldn't know what hit him.

"It's something new…similar to GPS but uses some sort of a different technology. He has the sensor, I have the signal lock," Jack explains as he stares at the screen. The little red blip is still blinking, still moving against a pixilated backdrop of greens and browns, and Jack's heart aches for the pain that he knows his friend is trying to run from.

"Mac can explain it in more detail. All I know is that it's a compromise we can both live with when he needs to get away for a bit and I…," Jack hesitates, not sure how he wants to finish that sentence.

Matty does it for him. "Don't want to let him go."

"Yeah." It's all Jack can stay because it's the truth.

Once he and Mac got in Jack's car to head back to headquarters from the motel where Mac and Joshua holed up in, Mac's nonchalant attitude fell apart for the act it was. He stopped talking, adrenaline crashing and walls going up, only speaking in debrief when absolutely necessary, and then only in short, to-the-point answers when Oversight really pushed. Jack knew he needed to shed Murdoc's skin, step out of the sociopath persona, the actions he was forced to take, and the headspace that he had to slip into.

It was that headspace that worried Jack the most, and Mac going off on his own was the last thing that Jack wanted. He tried every trick he knew to get his partner to stay and use the training facilities at DXS to unwind, burn off, and work through all that pent-up energy, but none worked. It only served to get him the same bitten off, "I'm fine, Jack! _"_

That was when he remembered Steve's package, and he breathed a huge sigh of relief when Mac actually agreed to wearing the sensor before taking off at a run.

"Jack." Matty looks at him for a moment and her features soften before she speaks again. "We're off the clock. I'm not asking as your boss, I'm asking as a friend." She holds her hand up to forestall any response Jack might make. "And before you say it, I know he's _going to_ _be_ fine, because you'll see that he is…you always do. What I want to know is how Mac is _now_."

As much as Jack always hates it when Mac says those words that was going to be his knee-jerk answer. If he's going to be able to help the kid sort through the chaos that's currently swirling around that big brain of his, Jack needs to sort through his own jumble of feelings. He and Matty may still butt heads on occasion, but they are friends, and her "no nonsense" attitude was just what he needs some times.

"So you didn't buy his " _I was just playing a part_ , _" "as easy to shed as this jacket"_ line either, huh?" Jack asks, but it's more of a rhetorical question; he knows his boss doesn't miss a trick when it comes to anything.

"No."

Jack sighs. He lifts his hand and glances down at his phone swiping his thumb across the screen to reactivate it and bring the tracking app back live again.

Jack knows the details of all the trails that Mac always runs, and this one is further, the terrain rougher, steeper, and harder than any of his usual circuits. It's not aimless, though it is the total long way to get to where it ends, but Jack isn't surprised. The track he's on will only lead him to one place and Jack wonders if his partner is even aware of where he's headed. In the mindset the kid was in when he left Phoenix, Jack seriously doubts it. It has been quite a while since either of them has needed the refuge that his old cabin in the hills afforded.

But today was one of those days…for both of them.

Jack drops himself onto the arm of the chair beside him and looks at Matty. He opens his mouth to answer and nothing comes out. He's at a loss for words to explain the jumble that his own mindset is in, and it never ceases to surprise him in the least that every time that happens, Mac is the cause of it.

"Mac…" Jack trails off, clutching his phone like it's a physical lifeline connecting him to his young friend. Mac is… what? Angry, confused, hurting… doubting himself; his list could go on and on.

"Is a hell of an Agent," Matty finishes for him as she comes to lean against the side of the chair opposite him. "He did an incredible job today."

"You're preachin' to the choir here, boss," Jack says with a small smile. He can't help but shake his head at how she's trying to bait him. Because they both know that his issues with all this have nothing to do with his partner's abilities; the kid did a kick-ass job today, terrified the Hell out of him, but kick-ass none the less. Mac is the best of the best that Jack has ever worked with, and that's saying something because he has worked with some incredible people in his career.

"And I know, alright," Jack says. "I know that Mac has taken on other personas before, has had to become someone he wasn't. But this…" Jack shakes his head. "That sonovabitch got under his skin like nobody I've ever seen do. Brought out a side of him I've never seen before, Matty. And we've been through some pretty crazy stuff… _done_ some pretty crazy stuff."

"I have to say I thought I was going to have to call security to the Monitor Room and have you restrained when MacGyver went after Murdoc in interrogation. Even I was surprised by that," Matty admits.

Jack doesn't grace her with an answer, because he doesn't have too. They both know it would've taken more guards than the entire building had to stop him if he had wanted to get into that room. As it was, it took everything that Jack possessed not to knock that steel door down and pull his partner out of there when Mac wrapped his hands around that psychopath's throat.

That wasn't Mac. They balanced each other out, Ying to the other's Yang, Mac's brain to his brawn. In one short meeting Murdoc blew that out of the water, somehow gained the personal and background information necessary to know just what button to twist and manipulate to send Mac over the edge.

And the kid only had one trigger.

Jack scrubs a hand down his face as he tries to sort out and make sense of the riot of feelings and emotions swirling inside. That's exactly what Murdoc wants. He wants them off-balance, confused, off-kilter.

"Murdoc…" His name is a growl hissed through Jack's clenched teeth, and he turns his head and glares at the smiling sociopath that's still lit up larger than life on the wall. That sonovabitch is like a master chess player and he's playing them all…setting them up.

"I'll tell you though, that sociopath was right about one thing. This ain't over," he says, deep voice tinged with worry and concern. "Not by a long shot. I can feel it in my bones, Matty. Murdoc, Thornton, the _damn_ Organization, Horn…and what's with that anyway? Wanting to get caught? Who does that?" Jack says incredulous as he stands up and starts to pace the War Room. They knew next to nothing before, and now? Well, he doesn't know what number less than nothing is, but his partner would. Mac would be able to show him the equation with the answer to the last decimal point and then proceed to explain the entire scientific theory behind it.

It's a tangled web of lies and deceit, and as soon as they unwind one strand they find another snarl of knots lurking underneath. There are too many unknown players, and it seems they are the only ones without the rule book.

"I'll tell you who," Jack continues, not stopping his movement as he turns and looks at Matty, "People with a big, bad-ass agenda, that's who. Hell, even Nikki. Because between you and me, her "deep cover CIA _…"_ and he raises his hands shoulder width apart and air-quotes those last words to further emphasize his personal opinion on her explanation too them. "Too damn convenient for my liking."

"I vetted her myself," Matty tells. "Called in a few favors afterwards. Even set Riley loose on her. Her story checks out. I'll agree she's not one of my favorite people, and it was a shitty thing she put MacGyver through, but she's clean, Jack."

"I appreciate you doing that, Matty. I do." Jack says. And he did, immensely. He knows she wasn't just doing her job as Director by checking out Nikki and her story. His former CIA supervisor is fiercely protective of the ones she cared about. Their past, and yeah, Jack will admit—to himself only—his _unease_ at finding out that none other than Matilda Webber was going to be his new boss, had him forgetting that fact.

But the two of them have come a long way since those tense, uncomfortable early days and weeks of her Directorship. A long overdue, emotional talk between them cleared the air and put to rest old resentments. Matty has not only kept the team together and put herself and her job at risk more than once for them, but she has become part of their little rag-tag family as well.

"Well, I still don't trust her."

"You don't trust anyone where MacGyver is concerned," his boss says dryly.

Jack just tips his head in acknowledgment, because it is as simple as that, and he won't apologize for it. Or change it. Outside of Matty, Riley, and Bozer, there isn't anyone he trusts with the kid. Everyone in the entire DXS building knows it, and he's had a _talk_ with more one person over the years to make that point known.

"This whole thing is beyond intricate. How long has this plan to take us out been in the works? With how many people involved? And how many times has Murdoc stated, matter-of-factly, that he was going to kill Mac?"

That's the part that scares Jack the most, and he settles himself on one of the couches again. Usually, he is the still one, and Mac is the one whose kinetic energy can only be quelled with the ever-present paperclips Jack keeps on hand for just that purpose. Today, he's the one who can't settle, who's on edge and ill-at-ease like he's only ever been while in the desert.

He shakes his head, unable to wrap his mind around just how deep—and how far up—this has to go. "The stuff they were able to pull off during this crazy ride today? Like not only knowin' that my Strike Force was there, but that we were on that rooftop? This was Mac's _life_ we were talking about…I made damn sure we were ghosts."

Jack's jaw clenches as he recalls Horn telling Mac he picked up a tail he needed to lose, and he can feel the same fear-tinged adrenaline start to course through his veins now that he felt then. Left in the dark, helpless and anxious, he could only wait with his heart in his throat for his partner to reach back out to him, all the while not knowing which outcome he feared more..

Mac succeeding in pulling off becoming the perfect sociopath…or him failing.

Jack has to almost physically shake himself from the memories, remind himself that it had all worked out, that he and his men got there before the kill team could carry out their orders, that they were both alive and well. Well…not _well_ as in everyone was all hunky-dory, because he knew for a fact that his partner was as far from okay as one could get, but he'd be taking care of that very shortly.

"Jack." Her hand is suddenly on his arm, voice full of understanding and compassion, "I know you did." It speaks volumes to just how much this entire day has shook everyone up that she doesn't just bark at him and tell him to just get over it.

"That's some badass, high-tech stuff these guys are playin' with, Matty," Jack says grimly. "This ain't no backwoods, third-world country that has a beef with us. These guys—"

"They're connected," Matty finishes.

Jack nods his head. "Powerful… Something big is barreling down the Pike, Matty. Something real bad. And we're dead center in their crosshairs."

"Let 'em come," Matty bites out. "We're going to be ready for them, Jack. We're going to tear every one of them down. I don't care how far up it goes."

Jack smiles at that, lips quirking up on one side. His low drawl is dark and dangerous. "Now that's a plan I can get behind."

"Now get outta here, Jack. Go take care of our boy."

"Always." Jack's stands up, fishing the keys to his jeep out of the pocket of his jeans as he heads towards the door, intent on doing just that. He'll make it to the cabin before Mac; meet his partner as he crests the ridge that marks the boundary of his property.

Then they'll talk and yell and breakdown…and, Jack suspects, probably argue a whole hell of a lot, too. But they will deal with the fallout of this damn case that Jack has hated with a passion from the very beginning. They will move on and put themselves back together, better and stronger and ready for what's about to hit them next. Then they'll head back to the Ranch and pick-up Riley and Bozer.

Stay together. Stay close.

Then Jack would gear up…and wait.

No body messes with his team and gets away with it.


End file.
